Truth or Dare - Movie Review

Hey guys! I'm back with another movie review. Today I'll be talking about and analyzing a horror movie which turned out to be more frightening than I expected. I hope you enjoy my review!

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Actors/Actresses: 

• Olivia Barron: Lucy Hale
• Lucas Moreno: Tyler Posey 
• Markie Cameron: Violett Beane
• Brad Chang: Hayden Szeto
• Carter/Sam: Landon Liboiron
• Tyson Curran: Nolan Funk 
• Penelope Armani: Sophia Taylor Ali 
• Ronnie: Sam Lerner
• Giselle Hammond: Aurora Perrineau 
• Office Han Chang: Tom Choi 
• Callux: Joe Ochman 

Genre: Horror 

Rating: PG-13

Brief Plot Analysis: Truth or Dare occurs when a group of college friends take a trip to Mexico. While on the trip they meet a fellow college student named Sam who takes them to ancient ruins to play a game of truth or dare. What they didn't know was that the game is real and they now have to play along or die. What I liked about this movie is that it took a childhood game and made it

completely demonic and twisted. It was fascinating and actually creeped me out. Whenever a character was asked truth or dare, they were typically asked by someone they knew and the person's face become extremely twisted. If you're confused about what I'm talking about just check out the picture on the right. My boyfriend and I were sooo freaked out about the faces that we couldn't watch it at night. The only thing that I didn't like about the plot was that it was simplistic and predictable. As a watcher, you knew where the movie was headed and who was going to die and who was going to survive. There was a huge twist at the end of the movie that developed a path for a second movie. 

Film Features: There isn't much to say about the film features to be honest. I think that they did a really good job with the special affects and makeup with making the actors/actresses smiles look extremely twisted/demonic. I'm not going to lie; I turned my head on some of the gory scenes so I can't give any specifics in relation to how those were done, but the scenes that I did see were nicely done. 

Characters: Here's where things get tricky. I liked the plot of the movie; however, the characters were not always likeable and some times I didn't really care about them. I thought that some of there situations were interesting and definitely presented themselves to be a big deal when they decided to do truth instead of dare; however, the situations were simply thrown together. They were not developed nor fleshed out. I understand that a movie can only be certain length when considering budget and viewership; however, it is awkward for movie creators to add such complex ideas and themes and then they forgo giving themselves enough time to allow their characters to work through those themes. I enjoyed Olivia, the main character, in a lot of ways, but I also thought that the was written as too innocent of a character especially when a lot of her situations started coming to light. She felt unrealistic and 2 dimensional and it didn't help that it was Lucy Hale portraying her character. I could not remove my thoughts of her acting from Pretty Little Liars. 

Overall Thoughts: Overall I thought that the movie was pretty decent. I like the premise and I thought that it was interesting; however, I do believe it fell short in terms of character development. It wasn't the best horror movie that I've ever seen, but it also wasn't the worst. I think that there will be a sequel to this movie and I'll definitely watch it.